The Paris Review
| The Paris Review
|
|
|---|---|
| description | American literary magazine |
| language | English |
| publishing company | Susannah Hunnewell, The Paris Review Foundation (United States) |
| First edition | Spring 1953 |
| Frequency of publication | quarterly |
| Sold edition | 20,000 copies |
| ( Paris Review Media Kit 2016, p.6 (PDF)) | |
| Editor-in-chief | Emily Nemens |
| Web link | theparisreview.org |
| Article archive | theparisreview.org/back-issues |
| ISSN (print) | 0031-2037 |
The Paris Review is an American literary magazine published quarterly in New York .
The magazine was founded in Paris in 1953 by a group of young American writers around George Plimpton , who was also the first editor-in-chief and held this position until his death in 2003. Emily Nemens has been editor-in-chief of Paris Review since April 2018 .
The magazine promotes and publishes current literary productions, predominantly, but not exclusively, by American authors. The Paris Review is particularly well-known for the series of interviews, which has been ongoing since the first edition, with contemporary writers about the foundations and conditions of their work.
Program
In the first edition of the Paris Review 1953 authoritative preface of the writer finds the editions of the magazine in the following decades William Styron in a "letter to an editor" (Letter to to editor) , the magazine should present themselves to the readers as follows :
“Dear reader, THE PARIS REVIEW hopes to emphasize creative work - fiction and poetry - not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines and putting it pretty much where it belongs, ie, somewhere near the back of the book. […] I think THE PARIS REVIEW should welcome these people into its pages - the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-ax-grinders. "
“ Dear Reader, The Paris Review hopes to highlight creative activity - narrative literature and poetry - not to exclude literary criticism, but with the aim of removing criticism from the dominant position it occupies in most literary magazines and to put it where it belongs, somewhere near the spine of the book. […] I think the Paris Review should have these very people on its website - the good writers and good lyric poets, the non-drummers and non-arguers [ie: those who don't beat the drum for one cause and who don't beat another Interests represented as the literary]. "
This program was retained, and from then on the Paris Review saw its task as being a platform for the publication of literary works by authors of current interest. Review and literary criticism should not play a role. The first poetic works by world-famous authors such as Adrienne Rich , Philip Roth , VS Naipaul , T. Coraghessan Boyle , Mona Simpson , Edward P. Jones , and Rick Moody later appeared in the Paris Review , the first excerpts from the English-language edition of Samuel Becketts Roman Molloy were published in the fifth issue of the magazine in 1953.
History of the magazine
The first ideas for founding the Paris Review went back to conversations between Peter Matthiessen and Harold "Doc" Humes : In the late 1940s, Humes published a less successful magazine in Paris, The Paris News-Post , which wanted to bring France closer to those Americans who who came to Paris at the time as part of the American Marshall Plan program. In 1951, Matthiessen proposed to Humes to give up the news post and start a purely literary magazine. Matthiessen managed to get more writers to participate; important for the coming development was v. a. contact with William Styron , because he in turn was able to get his childhood friend George Plimpton excited about the project.
In 1953 the Paris Review was founded in Paris by Humes, Matthiessen and Plimpton, and the extended circle of first editors also included William Pène du Bois (graphics and design), Thomas H. Guinzburg (editor-in-chief) and John PC Train (editor-in-chief). The solution to the most pressing financial problems ensured that George Plimpton managed to win the multimillionaire Sadruddin Aga Khan as financier and founding publisher, a role that Aga Khan assumed for the next 23 years.
However, it was not only literary contexts that played a role in the founding of the Paris Review , as it turned out decades later: One of the most important ideas behind the early days of the magazine, Peter Matthiessen, first opened Humes and Plimpton in the mid-1960s, which he then called from the American Secret Service CIA was paid agent in Paris and that the invention of the Paris Review served his cover, 2007 he first publicly admitted this. The project was supported by the CIA front organization Congress for Cultural Freedom in order to promote a cultural orientation towards the West in France, and in particular was intended to reduce the influence of communist unions on left-wing culture. Matthiessen had been a student at Yale University and had been recruited for the CIA by his favorite professor; In an interview at Pennsylvania State University , he confirmed the two-year commitment to the CIA as the only event of his life that he regretted.
The magazine quickly found recognition in the English-language literary scene, as evidenced by the willingness of "new" and established writers to publish for the first time in the Paris Review and the willingness to participate in the interviews in the newly developed, unusual format. The success of the magazine was not least due to the fact that the enthusiastic first editors had managed to occupy a very special niche in the literary business with their programmatic focus on genuinely literary creations. And the success was also due to the fact that George Plimpton - among many other activities - made the magazine his life's work: "I would give up my own writing before I would give up editing The Paris Review". (I'd rather give up my own writing than give up editing the Paris Review .)
The "Art of Fiction" interviews
Famous are the extensive interviews with contemporary authors - established artists as well as "newcomers" to the literary world - which the Paris Review has published in every issue since the magazine was founded.
The special feature of the interviews was that the interviewed authors were given an unusually large amount of space and time to reflect and deepen the poetological and biographical foundations of their art in a personal conversation. The interviews lasted several hours, and the interviewees often met for several rounds of talks on different days. Between spring 1953 and autumn 2018, well over 350 authors were interviewed for the 226 issues of the magazine to date, most of them from the American / British-speaking area.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alexandra Alter, Sydney Ember: The Paris Review Names a New Editor: Emily Nemens of The Southern Review , The New York Times, April 5, 2018; accessed October 23, 2018.
- ^ Paris Review Archives : William Styron, Letter to an Editor , 1953 , accessed May 1, 2014
- ↑ Website of the magazine: About The Paris Review , accessed May 2, 2014
- ↑ Blair Fuller , Memories (IN PARIS IN THE LATE 1940s) , miniature in: The Daily (Paris Review-Blog): Blair Fuller, Editor Emeritus , August 4, 2011, accessed May 11, 2014
- ^ Paris Review: About The Paris Review , accessed May 9, 2014
- ^ Paris Review: Founding Editors , accessed May 9, 2014
- ↑ Andrew Anthony: Been there, done that , The Observer , October 5, 2003, accessed May 10, 2014
- ↑ Celia McGee: The Burgeoning Rebirth of a Bygone Literary Star , The New York Times , January 13, 2007, accessed May 11, 2014
- ↑ Rachel Donadio: The Paranoiac and The Paris Review , The New York Times , February 17, 2008, accessed May 11, 2014
- ^ Joel Whitney: The Paris Review, the Cold War and the CIA , Salon , May 27, 2012, accessed May 11, 2014.
- ^ Penn State University, Author's Reflections - Conversations from Penn State: Interview with Peter Matthiessen (Youtube archive of the PSU) , from minute 5:00; accessed March 17, 2016.
- ↑ Oliver Burkeman, Hemingway, Mailer and me , The Guardian , October 1, 2002, accessed May 10, 2014
- ↑ cit. to: website of the movie Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself (2012): I would give up my own writing before I would give up editing The Paris Review , accessed May 10, 2014
- ^ Dwight Garner: Paris Review Editor Frees Menagerie of Wordsmiths , The New York Times , October 22, 2010, accessed May 3, 2014.